Prions Found in Plants

Prions — the infectious, deformed proteins that cause chronic wasting disease, or CWD, in deer — can be taken up by plants such as alfalfa, corn
and tomatoes, according to new research from the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison.

The research further demonstrated that stems and leaves from tainted plants were infectious when injected into laboratory mice.

…“Imagine people, wildlife or livestock eating a cereal or vegetable that could years or decades later cause an incurable, fatal brain disease.

Prions cause 'Mad Cow' disease and a variety of "brain wasting" and other diseases in people and animals. They form "spontaneously" in response to
environmental change, become infectious and also, can be inherited (with or without genetic changes).

Apparently, the original "Gag Order" on prions came from Big Pharma and was enforced under "Confidentiality Agreements" with staff proteinologists
(proteinology being the precursor to proteomics). Later on, microbiologists and other scientists and professionals also signed the mandatory
Confidentiality Agreements. By the time politicians and governments got in the loop, they had to play along because they didn't understand anything
about the issue except that it was way too big to tackle. Especially since Big Pharma, Big Agriculture and Big Oil were holding all the cards.

We are all one. Prions are supposed to be everywhere - they are an important mechanism that helps us all adapt to our planet's changing
environments, and evolve.

In fact, long before prions were "officially recognized" by the scientific establishment and well before Prusiner got his Nobel prize for
"discovering" prions, various pharmaceutical and agricultural corporations were synthesizing prions and using the mechanism to create 'protein based'
medications and to modify plant and animal genes.

More Bad News

The money guys were too ignorant and stupid to realize that their little profit generators would change the biological foundations of our world.

Here's a Prion Primer I wrote back in 2005. Not too much has changed since then.

Authorities currently recognize about six prion diseases, all of which infect brain tissue and cause brain diseases like Mad Cow (BSE), variant CJD,
and fatal familial insomnia. No other prion strains or prion-related diseases are acknowledged officially as related to prions. This official position
reflects a policy of denial: a conspiracy of silence.

According to the official spin, Mad Cow and other prion diseases are caused mainly by eating infected brain tissue - and have no effect whatsoever on
any part of the body except the brain. Bull puckey. The official spin is about population control, and protecting industry profits - not scientific
rigor. If the range of prion strains and prion-related diseases is not acknowledged, then their control will not be regulated, and industry profits
are preserved.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that if Mad Cow prions take decades to get from the gut to the brain, they're gonna make a few stops along the
way. Fact is, on their way to the brain prions bump into new cells, experience environmental change - and respond by creating new strains.

Different prion strains infect different cells - and cause different diseases and symptoms.

The existence of so many different prion strains blocked general acceptance of the prion hypothesis for a time. Old-school scientists argued that
because proteins don't have genetic material, prions can't evolve and create new strains. The mystery of prion strains was solved when researchers
proved that prions create new strains by shape-shifting - they literally just fold into a slightly different shape to create a new strain - and cause
a new disease or modify an existing one.

In fact, even a change in temperature can cause an existent prion to shape-shift, misfold in a different way, create a new infectious prion strain -
and cause a different disease.

“UCSF scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a change in the folded shape of a prion protein changes its infectious properties –
including the prion’s ability to jump 'species barriers.' The research, based on studies of prion infectivity in yeast, solves one of the great
puzzles about prions: If they are infectious proteins with no genetic material of their own and no ability to mutate genetically, how can a single
prion exist in different strains that can cause different diseases?

…Studies of the melting temperatures of the prions and their resistance to breakdown by enzymes indicated that the conditions generated prions with
different physical properties.

...shape change accounts for strain differences, and it lays the groundwork for research to determine the physical differences that allow a prion to
change shape and cause different diseases. ...The studies show that a single infectious protein can adopt different, distinct, self-propagating shapes
and that these conformational differences underlie the differences in prion strains.

......Scientists have grappled for years with one of the central tenets of the protein-only hypothesis, namely, that a single prion protein, when
unaltered by genetic mutation, can give rise to different strains of prions with varying infectivity and other properties. The two research groups
established that the strains could be accounted for by different misfolded conformations of the same protein. ...In test tube experiments, the
researchers demonstrated that the protein conformations produced at different temperatures propagated themselves as distinct strains - providing
templates for the folding of other proteins into the same shapes. Further structural analyses of two of the strains confirmed that the proteins were,
indeed, folded differently. ...what we are learning about how to make proteins misfold into different conformations will be directly relevant to
understanding mammalian prions, and perhaps even to trying to understand the strain phenomenon in mammalian prions. This includes how strains can
affect the virulence of a disease or how likely it is to jump a species.

Infectious prions enter the body in various ways, not just by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water. The way a disease enters
the body is called the "vector," the route it uses to get in is called "transmission," and the place it enters the body is called
the "point of entry." The places where] diseases exist in the world are called "reservoirs."

The article above talks about milk as a vector with transmission via the oral route, the stomache as the point of entry, and
cattle as a reservoir.

2002 - Prion transmission in blood and urine: what are the implications for
recombinant and urinary-derived gonadotrophins?
(Gonadotrophins are hormones that stimulate the sex glands and control reproductive activity. Think prostate cancer and hormone replacement therapies
- for starters.)

…lack of PrPc expression favors the establishment of HSV latency whereas HSV replication proceeds more efficiently in neuronal tissue that expresses
this protein. The data further suggest that PrPc may be involved in a metabolic pathway that culminates in apoptosis of neurons that have been
infected by neurotropic viruses.

In short, the world now is contaminated fairly completely with infectious prions - all of which may affect different cells, and cause different
diseases. People can "catch" prion diseases from a variety of places, including from prions hitchhiking on a flu virus for example - and the prions
may cause genetic mutations that are passed on to the victims' children.

Take Home Point:

If you want to talk about prions, you HAVE to talk about evolution.

This is horrifying! I thought since I'm a devout vegan I am out of harm's way with Prions.

In corn, tomatoes, etc.. WATER?!?! Sounds like prions (deformed proteins) can be found in everything and science needs to find ways to cure prionic
diseases as prevention appears to not be effective even in the strictest of diets, now.

...science needs to find ways to cure prionic diseases as prevention appears to not be effective even in the strictest of diets, now

Proteins misfold when they're exposed to environmental change, and create prions - it's a natural part of life, and an extremely effective
evolutionary mechanism. Generally, only the successful adaptations are passed along - but sometimes, as with the gene that confers immunity to
malaria, the flipside is disease (sickle cell anemia).

We DO need to stop changing our environment with contaminants and drugs and chemicals, etc - but we also need to recognize that we are evolving just
like everything else on our planet.

In my youth i was considered "bright but lazy". This persisted for me until I was around 25. When I was around that age I had a very, very bad flu
case. Not being insured, and being a typical hardheaded man, I layed up in bed and did treatment there. I did my nebulizers, by mask if i was
unconscious. I took the expectorants during my twice daily wakings, guzzling gator aid, and peeing like a race horse. I stumbled into the bathroom,
back to bed with my lips and nails varying shades of blue for 2 weeks straight.

I was...different. Its hard to explain. But the man I was before that was not the man i was emerging from that illness. I had high fevers
interspersed with lower fevers when i took motrin or tylenol (it was hard to medicate me being unconscious, and sometimes flailing a bit in delirium).
But my memory was unaffected, as was my ability to think. At least, I don't think I got too much "dumber" from fever. But my focus and general
outlook on life has changed.

When I was around 28, it changed even moreso when I had a really bad case of shingles on my scalp/forehead. The pain of the shingles wasn't that bad,
other than constant dull aching.

My wife has made mention of how really bad illnesses change my personality just a touch.

I have made mention before of how I think viral infections (or possibly inclusive of prionic, now that we are talking about it) could create
significant genetic changes in people between the time they are born and the time they die. "Significant" really means that active genetic expression
can be altered in this context.

ETA: i think that the first case of the flu, or whatever i was sick with, is where it happened. The second case of shingles could have had some
effect....or not. It just seems that after that, I had this intense focus. And I lost some kind of something. Fun, or something like that. Hard to
explain.

...viral infections (or possibly inclusive of prionic, now that we are talking about it) could create significant genetic changes in people between
the time they are born and the time they die. "Significant" really means that active genetic expression can be altered in this context.

Absolutely - there's no doubt about it. It's called "epigenetic" change, and it's real. Also, check out my next post. It looks at the larger view
of evolution (and evolutionary stress, in the form of rapid environmental change).

Great vids, thanks. : up : ...That woman (who's name I forget at the moment ...?) has done major, groundbreaking work on prions. She's the first to
show the role prions play in evolution I believe.

Thinking about the effects of environmental change, and recognizing that prion formation is the first response to all kinds of environmental changes
(exposure to radiation, chemicals, rapid temperature change, etc.) - I keep going back to the 6th Mass Extinction. And sorry, am ready for bed now -
will try to get back tomorrow.

The world’s ecosystems have been plunged into chaos, with some conservation biologists thinking that no system, not even the vast oceans, remains
untouched by human presence. Conservation measures, sustainable development, and, ultimately, stabilization of human population numbers and
consumption patterns seem to offer some hope that the Sixth Extinction will not develop to the extent of the third global extinction, some 245 mya,
when 90% of the world’s species were lost.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbig deal.....
Just what do YOU propose we actually can really, and practically DO about a substance (prion) that is ubiquitous ( (everywhere)and virtually
indestructible.....(cannot be destroyed in the average autoclave.....
That simplY refolds itself to make a different prion in any organ, and that could be one of the causative functions of mutation(evolution)???
Thanks for the extra info, but i looked at this a few years ago, and at my age its too damn late to stop drinking the milk or eating meat etc etc.
Now you say they are virtually in everything organic, MAYBE THEY ARE THE REAL FORCE BEHIND THE VARIETYOF LIFE ON EARTH, AS WELL AS THE DESTRUCTION OF
IT.....ILL NEVER KNOW ANYWAYS AND IM GETTING READY TO EXPIRE SOMEDAY ANYWAYS......SAD BUT TRUE.....
lOOK OVER YOUR OWN SHOULDER AT THE RIVER OF LIFE WHICH NEGAT YOU.
THINK WE CAN ACTUALLY EFFECT IT?
Truth to tell ive already written the human race of vermin off..............

I happen to believe that autism is an evolutionary adaptation. Could prions be the cause of autism? Interesting thread, and certainly gives
information I did not know. There is a kind of symmetry in the idea that the 'building blocks' of life, might also be the 'agents' of death.

Just what do YOU propose we actually can really, and practically DO about a substance (prion) that ...could be one of the causative functions of
mutation(evolution)???

How 'bout recognize prions' importance as an evolutionary mechanism? And THINK about the fact that they form "spontaneously" in response to
environmental change? And then think about what happens when we dump chemical medications into our bodies' micro-environments - and chemical
contaminants into our planet's macro-environment. For starters.

The fact that prions exist has been suppressed for over half a century. Meanwhile, the human activities that create prions proceeded and
increased - at a rate that far exceeds the natural order. The impacts on our planet's biological foundations were predictable and are now
manifesting.

The conspiracy of silence about prions is a MAJOR one, perpetrated for nothing but profit - and continued for the same reason. At the very least, we
should discuss the issue and its implications to life in general, not just on our own species. Such scientific knowledge should be basic, and taught
in every school so that everyone can make fully informed decisions about how they live and what they put in their own bodies, at least.

Now you say they are virtually in everything organic, MAYBE THEY ARE THE REAL FORCE BEHIND THE VARIETYOF LIFE ON EARTH,

Yep. You got it. Like I said: If you want to talk about prions, you HAVE to talk about evolution.

lOOK OVER YOUR OWN SHOULDER AT THE RIVER OF LIFE WHICH NEGAT YOU.
THINK WE CAN ACTUALLY EFFECT IT?

We can and we do. Which is why I support open access to information, especially scientific information - to 'level the playing field' and allow
everyone the opportunity to make fully informed decisions.

That said - I think prions are way cool, and evolution is astounding. The way things work, we respond to change from the bottom up, starting with
non-living molecules - and they help us adapt and evolve. How cool is that?!

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